1. Related Technical Fields
Related technical fields include travel guidance systems, travel guidance devices, travel guidance methods, and computer programs that set a route from a departure point to a destination as well as perform arrival determination with respect to a destination based on the set route.
2. Related Art
In recent years, many vehicles are mounted with navigation devices that are capable of guiding a driver to easily arrive at a desired destination by providing travel guidance of the vehicle. Here, the navigation devices are devices that can detect a current position of the vehicle via a GPS receiver or the like, acquire map data corresponding to the current position through a recording medium such as a DVD-ROM, a HDD, and the like, and display the data on a liquid crystal monitor. The devices enable the driver to recognize at a glance the point where the vehicle currently travels, by reading out the map data including the current position of the vehicle from the recording medium or the like, drawing a map image of the vicinity of the current position of the vehicle based on the map data to display on a display device, displaying a vehicle position mark to be superimposed on the map image, scrolling the map image according to the movement of the vehicle, and moving the vehicle position mark with the map image being fixed on the screen. In addition, the aforementioned navigation devices include a route search function that, upon setting a desired destination, calculates the most appropriate route from a departure point (for example, the current position of the vehicle) to the set destination, and also a travel guidance function that performs travel guidance along the calculated route. In recent years, some cellular phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), personal computers, and the like have the same function as the aforementioned navigation devices.
In the aforementioned navigation devices or the like, when the vehicle travels along the set route, whether the vehicle has arrived at the destination is determined. If it has been determined that the vehicle has arrived at the destination, the processing to inform the user that the vehicle has arrived at the destination and to cancel the set destination and route is performed.
The arrival determination with respect to the destination is generally performed based on an end of the set route. Specifically, in a case in which the vehicle is located on the route and has arrived within a predetermined distance (for example, 30 m) from the coordinate of the end of the route, it is determined that the vehicle has arrived at the destination.
However, if the destination has been set especially to a large facility with a huge site area (for example, a theme park, an outlet mall, or the like), the end of the route can be far from the destination. In such case, if the arrival is determined based on the end of the route, the travel guidance terminates at a position far from the destination, which may not allow the user to arrive at the destination. Therefore, if the destination between the end of the route and the destination is equal to or more than a predetermined distance, the arrival at the destination is determined based on the position of the destination instead of the end of the set route, as recited in Japanese Patent Application; Publication No. 2005-30864. Specifically, if the vehicle has arrived within a predetermined distance (for example, 200 m) from the positional coordinate of the destination, it is determined that the vehicle has arrived at the destination.